OK first off, apologies since I didn't read all four pages of this thread. But reading the first two pretty much gave me a gist of whats going on.......
I have been away from the game for nearly four months (until recently) and I agree to the following:
1. No one method of play can be imposed on anyone.
2. Rank and score are pointless as it is.
3. Its not that the furball fighting only attitude ruins play only for the strategic colonizers. Capturing bases (thinking of TT and the center part of the uterus map atm) does the same thing to the people that wanna furball.
So essentially we have people that like to furball, people that like to capture bases, people that like to pad their ranks/scores whether it be by furballing or capturing or any other methods
As for player skill yes it has degraded. I remember that in AH1 a bomb and bail suicide B17 run was an odd occurrence rather than the norm. People use to actually try torpedoing or level or dive bombing
rather than using a lancstuka
The medium bombers were actually used as air support for GVs, possible since bombers didn't have formations to carpet bomb the field.
I will simply suggest a 5min death penalty (no flying for 5 min) if you die more than 3minutes after you spawned. The 5min penalty is reduced to 4min if you bailed and were captured, 3min if you ditched and were captured, 2min if you bailed successfully over friendly territory and 1min if you successfully ditched in friendly space.
This reduction of course will not apply if there is a enemy cv within 25 or maybe even 12.5 miles of your spawn base at the time of your spawn.
Think that will do more to improve skill in this game than any other mod/implementation. If people can find ways to make a formation of Lancasters do immelmans, I'm sure they can find ways around this too, but wth I had to just chime in with my $0.02.
